Mobile abattoir and digital traceability to France
Swedish company Hälsingestintan is set to help improve animal welfare and meat quality in France.
Mobile abattoir and digital traceability to France
Swedish company Hälsingestintan is set to help improve animal welfare and meat quality in France. Franck Ribière, the producer and screenwriter behind the documentary Steak (R)evolution, is taking the Hälsingestintan concept to France.
In 2015, Hälsingestintan launched Europe’s first mobile abattoir for beef cattle. The company’s ethical concept for meat production eliminates all slaughter transportation, thus improving animal welfare, as the cattle are slaughtered on the farm in their familiar home environment and avoid stressful transportation. The concept also includes a digital chain of custody, informing the customer exactly which farm the animal comes from – and this in turn brings farmers and consumers closer together. The aim is to achieve sustainable meat production, where better animal welfare and high meat quality go hand in hand.
Hälsingestintan has attracted a lot of interest internationally, and the first foreign market to adopt the concept is France, where consumers have long been protesting against poor animal husbandry in the meat industry.
“We are absolutely convinced that this concept is ideal for the French market. I have spent many years travelling the world on a quest for the perfect meat, and have long wanted to improve animal welfare. We give French consumers a good reason to carry on eating meat, produced in a sustainable, ethical way,” says Franck Ribière.
Hälsingestintan and French company SAS Boeuf Ethique are entering into a several-year agreement, whereby Hälsingestintan will transfer its knowledge of animal welfare, mobile slaughter and traceability. The goal is to have the concept established in France during 2017.
“We regard this as an excellent first step for us in establishing our concept on more new markets,” says Henrik Viken, Deputy MD in charge of Hälsingestintan’s international business.
Britt-Marie Stegs, the founder of Hälsingestintan, sees the new agreement as a step in the right direction for spreading knowledge of more ethical, sustainable meat production to more countries.
“I am delighted to see Hälsingestintan’s concept – a concept based on values such as honesty, transparency, good animal welfare and high meat quality – making an impact also outside of Sweden. The farmers, the animals and the consumers all deserve this,” she says.
